Fresh solace

The craft beer goldrush is long over but nobody seems to have told the supermarkets. You can still get a reasonable selection of small-batch beers in most of them, and they keep on commissioning specials and own-label beers from local producers -- see Monday's post for an extreme example. In 2014, Tesco initiated the Solas range, with Rye River winning that particular tender. By 2016, six different Solas beers had been launched, and they were still there until a couple of months ago when the brand was given a refresh. Solas is now IBU and, for now, there are just three in the range. Still brewed at Rye River and in styles that were in the Solas range too, so presumably the recipes haven't changed. Nevertheless, a change of branding is sufficient to prompt a re-appraisal.

The codological labels present IBU as if it's a real brewery, standing for "International Brewers United", although Rye River is named as the place of production. The small print also says the bottles are unpasteurised, which is impressive for a supermarket own-brand.

IBU Czech Pils is quite misty in the glass, another thing warned of on the label. That does take the shine off what would otherwise be a handsome glass of gold. One thing the label doesn't tell us is what the hops are. From the crêpe paper and dry straw aroma, there's something other than just Saaz here, and it smells a little off-puttingly musty, hitting the bit of my senses that finds some noble hopping to be difficult to take. 5% ABV gives it a decent body, and there's a light touch on the carbonation: it doesn't taste or feel like cheap yellow fizz. There's quite a heritage quality to the malt side of the flavour: that rich and wholesome honey and treacle sweetness, though not overdone or any way cloying, finishing neatly and without fuss. Could it be the mash was decocted? I wouldn't be surprised. The hops... are not to my taste. It's that dry and musty quality that I've never got along with. That spoiled the party a little for me, but I can't say this is anything other than a well-made and flavourful beer, and definitely a cut or three above the mass-market dreck that gets sold as lager in these parts. I humbly request a switch to all-Saaz and will say no more on it.

A little surprisingly, the witbier survived the Solas purge, so it's out with the Hoegaarden bucket to receive IBU Belgian White. This isn't much hazier than the pilsner, which doesn't reflect especially well on either of them. As under the old brand, we're left to whistle for the coriander, and orange peel is the only added ingredient. My records show that Solas wit was 5.2% ABV, but we're down to an even 5% here. It's still sufficiently fluffy, although the mouthfeel is probably the best thing about it. I get phantom herbs from somewhere, maybe the yeast, but there's a savoury green tint to both the aroma and flavour. Its flavour has a solid dose of citrus too, although it's a sharper lemon buzz rather than orange, and that's no harm, offering a pleasant contrast to the softly wheaty side. This gets the job done, and I really don't miss the coriander. We're not really in witbier season at the moment, but come the brighter days, this will be an acceptable option. Fair play to Tesco for sticking to a beer style that's unfairly overlooked by the cool kids.

Lightest of the three, IBU Session IPA is 4% ABV. It's brightly golden and only very slightly hazed, with a handsomely tall and fluffy head. We're not told what the hops are, but to expect flavours of "tangerine passion fruit and citrus". The latter comes across strongest in the aroma, which has the almost peppery note of real grapefruit peel, along with some softer orange. The taste doesn't diverge significantly from this, so don't expect a whole lot of tropicals. The citric element more than makes up for it, however, providing jolly bursts of mandarin, lemon candy and jaffa zest: nothing too bitter, but flavoursome and enjoyable. The carbonation is a little on the high side, but it doesn't detract from the overall quality, and there's none of the thinness that a light supermarket session IPA could easily suffer from. But we know Rye River doesn't play that way.

I won't be back for the lager, but the other two mean Tesco has the beginnings of a house beer range to rival Lidl's. It needs a dark beer, though, of course.

Holy order

Mount Saint Bernard is England's only trappist brewery. Until recently it had only produced one, rather decent, beer: a dark ale. While abroad last month, I discovered that they have a second beer under the Tynt Meadow brand, and brought a bottle of it home.

Tynt Meadow Blond is a very light 5% ABV, and pours a darkish honey colour, hazed up but missing a proper head. Belgian blond ales are usually fruity and floral; this is quite a different creature, being dry and fizzy: almost lager-like. Indeed, the hops taste grassy and Germanic, laid on to a northern-pilsner intensity. Equally vibrant is the crisp, snappy pale malt flavour: cream cracker meets floury bap. Both hops and malt are able to present themselves so clearly because it seems the yeast is entirely neutral, bringing none of the abbey-ale esters I lazily assumed would be part of the deal.

While this isn't at all the beer I thought I was going to get, it's very pleasant drinking. I like, too, how much of a contrast it offers to their original beer, definitely not the same thing but without the colouring. Fair play, brothers.

Steady on, Kevin

A plethora of limited edition beers arrived into Aldi for the Christmas run-up this year. The German supermarket seems to have gone around the houses, recruiting Irish breweries to make unique beers just for it. Here are all the ones I got my hands on.

I liked the retro branding on Cascade Ridge, by Lough Gill, calling to mind the American pale ales of the 1980s and 1990s which went on to change the world of beer. This one looks retro in the glass too: a deep coppery amber; clear in a way that has long since gone out of fashion. It smells quite piney, with a edge of toffee, so very much doing what the packaging suggests it will. Although it's all of 5% ABV, it's quite light bodied, and the flavour comes across a little hollow as a result. There's a woody fustiness to it, then a pinch of caramel before it all finishes up impertinently quickly. I guess they're going for something resembling Sierra Nevada pale ale, but they've missed the mark substantially, even for the second-rate draught and canned version. The aftertaste is a savoury, almost sweaty, tang: Cascade hops at their earthiest and most Fuggle-like. It's not a good beer, tasting cheap and compromised, in a way that Lough Gill's work seldom does.

There is a possibility for redemption, however, with the altogether contemporary Simcoe Smash from the same brewery. Aldi tends not to do strong beer, and this is only 4.7% ABV, where I might have expected a point or two more. In the glass it's a beautiful clear gold with a fine white head, and the aroma makes it very clear it's a Simcoe beer: resinous and dank. Again, though, it all turns a bit basic when it goes to tasting, and again the low density is a major problem. It tastes thin, and there's no way around that. Hosted in the watery body is a very simple pine bitterness and no more than a brush of caramel malt. The Simcoe is not smashing it here. Corners have been cut. The end result does little other than hint at the beer it could have been with more hops and, above all, more body. Even as a light and fizzy budget thirst-quencher it leaves me wanting. 

There's another amber-coloured one in the Rascals's American IPA, bringing us back up to 5% in the ABV stakes. The can promises us classic pine and citrus but, like the Cascade Ridge, it doesn't meet the mark. While this doesn't have the sad staleness of that one, there's not much life about it. The aroma is more English IPA than American: jaffa peel and earthy minerals -- again I'm blaming Cascade's Fuggle origins for this. The flavour is very metallic, scouring the palate with a rough bitterness which is all about the flinty rasp and devoid of pine oils or citrus. There's a muddy, earthen funkiness in the middle, and then a raw acidic bitterness at the end. I found it devoid of charm, challenging and serious, but not bold enough to be entertainingly nasty. More than anything, it reminds me of the sort of hoppy American beers we used to get here, baked into dullness by a long and warm journey across the indifferent Atlantic. It's a little odd that two Irish breweries have produced such similar and unpleasantly retro beers at the same time. I hope Aldi aren't trying to make it A Thing. The right to fresh and zingy hops was a hard-won battle in this country, and hard-won by breweries such as Lough Gill and Rascals. Let's not go back to less enlightened times. Who's next?

DOT! It's one of those light, pale, yet oak-influenced beers of the sort they often make for the Teeling distillery giftshop but less so by themselves. Looks like Aldi is the latest recipient of their exclusivity largesse. Spin Off Series Oak Pale Ale is 4.8% ABV and a translucent gold, looking bright and settled but not quite. There's not much aroma, only a faint hint of white grape. The flavour is similarly... clean, coming across first with a dry and refreshing lager crispness. We get a hint of hop fruit after this, gently tropical, like the scent of ripe mango and pineapple in the next room. Everything finishes there and there's no sign of the oak at all. The carefully phrased label copy makes it obvious that this was done with oak chips in the tank rather than barrel ageing, and as such they needn't have bothered. It's a nice beer, and works well in the thirst-quenching session pale ale category, an oft-fogotten must at this time of year. But if you thought oak meant something oaky, this is not your DOT beer.

O Brother followed up the session IPA they made for Aldi with a stout. It's quite rare for an Irish brewery to introduce an ordinary session-strength stout, especially for a supermarket, but I'm delighted to see it. There's no reason to cede ownership of this space to the big brands. Eachtra is a little peaky looking: deep red-brown, like cola, rather than properly black. Not a thing wrong with the aroma, which has lots of spicy and roasty bonfire notes, smelling of late autumn rather than mid-winter. Soft carbonation gives it a little of the nitro vibes, but the effect is short lived. Perhaps the reason that microbreweries tend to make stronger stouts is that, within the low 4% zone and no nitrogen, it's going to feel watery, and this does. The base flavour is good, though, offering lots of milk chocolate, floral perfume and a dry-toast crispness. The finish is quite abrupt, however, though the chocolate does hang back in the aftertaste. I don't think this quite manages to be a plausible alternative to big-brand stout. Yes, it has a much greater depth of flavour, but the profile belongs in a bigger, fuller beer. To me, this tastes of craft stout done on the cheap, which I am sure is not the intention. Maybe going more on the roast would have worked better. The sweet and rich side this attempts to present really needs a stronger foundation.

That was shortly followed by another session IPA from O Brother: Clann. This one comes in a small can, and is slightly lighter than the previous one, at 3.8% ABV. It's a mostly-clear orange shade, and smells of orange too: zesty marmalade, with a candy coating on the shred. As one might expect, it's light and crisp, but not watery, having enough body to carry the flavour well. The flavour is those hoppy oranges again, here fizzed up into orangeade, of the classy French sort. There's an extra sweetness in the background, adding an element of ice lolly, while the bitterness builds as it goes, creating a buzz of green onion and pine needles by the end. I liked this. It's an excellent party-season beer: easy-going and refreshing, but tasty with it too.

The name Mo Chara is trademarked by The Old Carrick Mill distillery in Co. Monaghan. That's why the lager produced by the Mo Chara pub in Dundalk has been recently renamed as "Mo's Lager". The distillery has finally made use of its intellectual property, launching this porter as part of Aldi's winter range. I don't know where Mo Chara Irish Porter is brewed, but they know their porter. It's a little short in the head stakes, but looks well below that: densely black with barely a tint of red around the edges. The aroma is decently standard, bringing plain but acceptable notes of coffee and chocolate. This unfolds beautifully on tasting, hitting a perfect balance between toasted and herbal bitterness against smooth and nutty chocolate and caramel. There's a mineral tang on the finish -- flinty stone or sparky zinc -- then it fades respectfully off the palate, with the 5% ABV coming across lighter and less intrusive. This is very jolly stuff, and hits the good porter mark squarely in the centre. We don't get many beers like this, and I hope this one sells enough for a re-brew.

So there you have it. I get a general sense that Aldi's drive for cheapness has resulted in several of these beers being somewhat compromised, and far from the best work of the excellent breweries who produced them. Don't miss that porter, though.

The house wins

My wife had arrived in Haarlem a few hours ahead of me and had been beer shopping. There was a bottle of Leffe Winter waiting for me in the room, still welcome despite the amount of Belgian beer I had had in the days previous. This 6.6% ABV job is a clear garnet colour, with an aroma of a little caramel and a lot of hot alcohol, almost at solvent levels. The flavour starts dry, like wholemeal crackers, then adds an intensifying fruitiness which eventually reaches the point of tasting like cheap cream sherry. There's a lot going on, and the texture is too thin to carry all of it. It tastes like it should feel big and warm, like the better and more rounded dark and wintery Belgian ales. At this strength and this level of thinness, it seems like it's all cut corners. Still, it's the thought that counts, right?

The first port of call the following day was the landmark Haarlem brewpub, the Jopenkerk. I was tempted by the promise of oddness in something described as a gin-and-tonic IPA: Disco Inferno, brewed with lime, cucumber, juniper and quinine, to 6.5% ABV. In the glass it's a perfect clear golden colour and has a very ungimmicky west-coast aroma of sticky pine resin and citrus zest. The cumber elbows in to the flavour, infusing the whole experience from start to finish, contrasting with both the citric hops and a heavier, oilier sort of citrus which I'm guessing is the lime. I didn't get the tonic element, though there's a slight pepperiness which I'm guessing is from subtle juniper. Overall it's clean and straightforward fun: still a well-made IPA that doesn't let the novelty get in the way of quality.

The dark beer beside it is a raspberry stout called Raspberry Beeret. Clunky enough pun for you? This is 8% ABV and very densely black. Heavy and serious roast makes up the bulk of the aroma, with a hint of chocolate raspberry creeping into the background. It does more than creep into the flavour. Fundamentally, there is a very good strong stout here, luxuriously creamy and packed with warm rich chocolate. The problem is the raspberry, which tastes chemical and artificial, like it was made in a lab by people who have never tasted a raspberry. That cheapens and nastys the whole picture, and it would be much better without it. Although I'm sure there are plenty of drinkers who wouldn't choose it without the promise of raspberry, alas.

There was enough on the menu to tempt us to a second round. I chose Let's Gose To The Beach, partly out of nostalgia for cringey attempts at gose puns that don't really work. I haven't seen one in a while. It's another cocktail beer, this time channelling a margarita. Other than the salt, which is quite prominent in the flavour, there's not much else margarita-like here. There's zest, but it's more orange than lime, yet not quite as concentratedly orange flavoured as triple sec. I can see what they're getting at, but it doesn't quite fly. Still, as a beer, it's very enjoyable, offering a mix of cleanly sweet and acidic citrus, plus the salt, bringing elements of the core gose spec that too many craft brewers don't bother with. And all in an easy-going 4% ABV package, perfect for day drinking, which is just as well.

That made for quite a contrast to the beer next to it: I'm a Barley Girl, an 11% ABV barley wine. There's a very unsubtle whisky-like heat from the aroma of this dark red affair, with a hint of dark autumnal fruit behind. It's very thick, and tastes as boozy as it smells, starting on bitter prune and grappa overtones. This softens after a moment to more of a Christmas cake effect, though still hitting the palate with a jolt of hard liquor on the side. While all the way through it's every bit as hotly alcoholic as it suggests it's going to be, it's also smooth and sippable, having been appropriately matured.

I was back in church the following Sunday and tried something called Phunk Phenomenel, intrigued by the name. It turned out that this is simply Jopen's flagship American-style IPA Mooie Nel, which I've always found highly enjoyable, with extra grapefruit added. Or at least that's what the brewery says. Where Nel is hazy and orange, this is a clear golden colour, and it's also slightly stronger at 6.8% ABV against Nel's 6.5%. I had been hoping from the name that it would be some way funky, but it's all zesty and juicy instead, and now I know why. Tangerine in the foretaste and pepper afterwards, say my notes, and if you combine those two characteristics, you do indeed get grapefruit. I liked its easy drinkability, avoiding any oily, resinous, hot or sharp notes. This is polished, in both appearance and taste. It could stand to be a bit more punchily bitter, but then quite a few contemporary IPAs could too, so that's not a real complaint. The name is misleading but the beer is very good.

Jopen may be part of the establishment on the Dutch scene these days, but there's still much to enjoy at their central Haarlem citadel.

I paid a brief visit to the town's hybrid Irish/craft bar, The Wolfhound, as they had a new house beer under their Thor's Cauldron brand, Aurum, another IPA. Here's another one that's a lagerish clear gold in appearance, although it's surprisingly sticky with that, all tinned lychee, pineapple and peaches in syrup. The aroma is gentler, but still quite tropical, suggesting cool ripe honeydew melon in particular. A spritz of citrus zest at the tail end of the flavour doesn't quite balance the sweetness, but it helps. As a house beer in a somewhat raucous rockers pub, this is much better than it needs to be, bringing in the juicy elements of hazy beer but with the clean profile of the west coast. I've no idea who brews it, but they're good at IPA.

The Wolfhound wasn't showing the rugby so I had to go to Tierney's to watch Ireland get a beating by the All Blacks. There's a house beer brand here too: The Stolen Bicycle Brewery, though again I don't know where the actual brewing for it is done.

I started on Robbin' Bastard, an IPA of 5% ABV which arrived in a nonic pint glass with a monstrously thick head. Double yuck. This was much more what I expect from a house beer, though the better sort. It's a workmanlike performance of American pale ale, with a classic grapefruit bitterness and dry tannins on the finish. There's a bit of a nod to modernity in the lacing of peach or even mango around the edge of the flavour. That's your lot, though. It doesn't taste cheaply made and there's nothing off about any of it, so presentation aside, it gets a pass.

So yes, I was chancing my arm when I switched to their red ale for the second half. What was I expecting to happen? Thievin' Fecker is a most un-Irish 5% ABV, a brownish red colour, and again presented as a "pint" with an unacceptably huge head. Flavour was difficult to find here, so at least there are marks for stylistic accuracy. There's a dry and grainy roasted element, and more of those dry tannins, better suited here than in the IPA, perhaps. The hops are a mere echo of flowers, but fully tokenistic. Like the malt, for that matter. I don't get what anyone sees in this style. Here's one that's proficiently and accurately made, and is still dull as a wet weekend in Cavan. But if you're hunting genuine-tasting Irish red in Haarlem, or Nijmegan where they also have a pub, Tierney's has you sorted.

The last lap brought us to Café de Gooth on Botermarkt, which claims to have its own brewery but I saw no sign of it on the premises, so I think we're in house beer rather than brewpub territory. There's a cartoon theme to the venue's branding, and they've adopted the cartoon saint Bonniefatius as the mascot for their beer.

St Bonniefatius Bock should by rights have been in the lovely, warming, malt-driven Dutch autumn bock style, and maybe it's meant to be, but it's not. Instead of burnished chestnut, this 6%-er is a murky brown, and tastes murky with it. A dry roast starts the flavour off inoffensively but it degrades quickly into a greasy and thick mess, all hot and estery, like a homebrewed attempt at Belgian abbey ale that went wrong. Throw in some autolytic Bovril beefiness, double down on the dryness until it's acrid, then sprinkle with clove, and you have the complete picture. It's a cavalcade of amateur off-flavours, so we can definitely rule out it being a rebadged industrial beer. This has been lovingly produced on a small brewing kit by someone who didn't know what they were doing.

So naturally I followed it up with the beer advertised as being bright green. Levenselixir, they've named it, referencing, but not too closely, the knock-off Obelix character who is the café mascot. I could certainly use some strengthening magic potion after the previous beer. It's 6.5% ABV and is exactly as luridly green as the posters show it. Before the food colouring went in, I'm guessing it was a very pale pale ale. There's a haze as well, and the aroma is on the cusp of citrus and tropical. The impression switches styles on tasting, from pale ale to witbier, with its soft texture and lemony foretaste followed by a coriander bitterness. The lemon becomes a little more assertive in the flavour towards the finish, almost swinging us back towards pale ale, though I would still be prepared to believe that this is just coloured Hoegaarden, were it not for the whopping 6.5% ABV strength. Still, it doesn't taste at all like it came from the same brewery as the last one.

And so, with more questions than answers, I left the Low Countries once more. Even though I visit a lot, I never fail to find plenty of interest, and so easy to get around too. If you've not had the pleasure, get Belgium and the Netherlands on your beer travel list for 2025.

Elephant -v- Dragon

On Monday, I took you on a free-roaming rumble through a handful of Ghent hostelries. Today we're sticking strictly to the programme: the social events put on for judges at the 2024 Brussels Beer Challenge, of which I was one.

As I mentioned, Brouwerij Huyghe was a major sponsor of the event, and were very generous with their hospitality. In central Ghent they've set up a brewpub in one of the many beautiful historic buildings, and they've named it Artevelde, resurrecting a previously defunct local beer brand, itself named after a 14th century brewer, statesman and city hero who was killed by an angry mob. Ingrates. Questions were raised among some attendees over how much of the beer was actually brewed on site, rather than at the big out-of-town brewery.

The house beer is Artevelde Pintje, a pilsner. Getting into judging mode, I was looking hard for flaws here but couldn't find any beyond a small, and reasonable, hint of butter in the aroma. Otherwise it's very clean and simple fare, with a quaffable smoothness and superb thirst-quenching power. They haven't done anything fancy with the recipe, and while I like my pale lagers with a bit of a honed hop edge, I don't begrudge the roundness of this one. It's 5% ABV and I'm sure it's a coincidence that the main pilsner brewed at Huyghe, Mongozo, is too.

Although it's a completely different kind of beer, I reacted similarly to Artevelde Kriek. This is a very simple and sweet kriek, bright pink and foamy, without a trace of sourness. Instead, it's cherry sherbet and cherry candy all the way down. I've said before that I have a soft spot for beers like this, and can happily drink them in quantity. This one I could definitely have had more of, especially as it's only 3.6% ABV. Huyghe's Floris Kriek is also 3.6% ABV, funnily enough.

As far as I can see, Huyghe does not have a beer at 7.2% ABV though plenty are in the ballpark. That's the strength of Artevelde Grand Cru, a dubbel. This one gets no marks for style fidelity, with only a sweet and juicy raisin note indicating that style. It's sweet all the way through, in fact, missing all of dubbel's usual spicing and breadiness. Instead, you get a bouquet of fresh flowers and a bar of warm milk chocolate, suggesting the square of Turkish delight from the Cadbury Milk Tray selection. While it may be a bit of a candy confection, I enjoyed it a lot, more so than many a serious dubbel. Beers can be complex, interesting, and a bit silly, all at the same time. Especially in Belgium.

In due course, a couple of days later, we were bussed out to Delirium HQ in Melle, just south of Ghent, for a look around. It was really interesting to see Belgian brewing done at such an enormous scale. In one corner of the original brewery is the current hospitality suite, due for transformation into the sort of high-concept brand home that all the Belgian breweries seem to be developing these days. It's almost surprising that Huyghe is lagging behind. For now, there are antique bottles and breweriana, some old drays and brewing equipment and, oh yes, a bar.

I knew Huyghe had an abbey beer these days, Averbode, but I'd never tasted it. May as well now, while it's free. This is a blonde ale of 7.5% ABV, perfectly clear of course, and with a somewhat hot and estery aroma of sweet peach and pear. I was surprised, then, to find funky fermenting sileage in the foretaste, before it gives way to the peach and pear again. A pinch of white pepper finishes it off. It's all pretty normal for a Belgian blonde ale but I didn't find myself wanting to trade my more usual Duvel or La Chouffe for this upstart. It gave me an impression of a beer that's designed to fill a niche, rather than having a personality of its own. That said, in the absence of anything better, or anyone seeking payment for it, it will absolutely do.

Guillotine has been part of the Huyghe range for as long as I've been drinking in Belgium, but even though it's widely available with widespread point-of-sale material in pubs, I had never taken the trouble to try it. Here we go then. It's surprisingly good. The ABV is up at 8.5% and that has delivered lots of extra complexity: I got pepper and peach and almond and butter on a crisp blonde base with overtones of toasty champagne about it. This genuinely gave me a similar feel to drinking Duvel, though it has a personality all its own. I doubt it will be very long before I drink my second one.

On the far side of Ghent, in the village of Evergem, was the other big local brewery, van Steenberge. It's best known for its Gulden Draak range of very strong beers. Here they've put significant investment into the hospitality suite, and there were no old carts or copper wort chillers in the slick international-hotel-style bar on the top floor of the brewhouse.

I knew there were lots of Gulden Draak variants but didn't realise quite how many. From the various interesting offshoots available, I was drawn straight to Cuvée Prestige Laphroaig: barrel-aged, of course, but only for 16 weeks. That's not long enough to boost the ABV above the standard version's 10.5% ABV, although the labelleing tolerance at this level is fairly generous, so maybe it has. The aroma is alluringly peaty, like rural Donegal on a crisp cool morning. The dragon asserts itself in the flavour, which is unmistakably Belgian: sweet, smooth and warming with toffee to the fore. The smoke element adds a different kind of sweetness to this, creating an impression of a candied turf sod. I feared it would be harsh and chemically phenolic, but it comes across in a much more nuanced way; balanced even. There were other barrel-aged versions of Gulden Draak available, and now I'm wishing I tried more of them. Oh well.

Instead, I got stuck into the more conventional material from van Steenberge. They have a lager called 1784, badged as an Export, and in that area strengthwise, at 4.8% ABV. Dortmund has nothing to worry about here: it's quite sickly and sweet, in a way that pale German lager never is. Brown sugar and treacle feature in my notes, so it's really not my sort of thing: sickly and difficult. There's a certain dry mineral-water bite in place of bitterness, and that doesn't really work to counteract the sticky. Perhaps this attempt at lager shouldn't be surprising from the Gulden Draak people.

And of course they've tried their hand at craft. "Baptist" is the brand for the "cool" styles, with its very inverted-commas cool branding, all block colours and angular shapes. I don't know if Baptist IPA is meant to be American-style, but again they've reverted to type and produced something still quintessentially Belgian. It's 6.7% ABV and brimming with apricot; the more American grapefruit bitterness reduced to a supporting role. It doesn't go all-in with the esters, though, so is substantially crisper than most Belgian IPAs. It's still a bit basic, all told, however, and it's clear that IPA is not something in which the brewery specialises.

You'd have thought to-style witbier wouldn't be too much of a challenge for them, but the first thing I noticed about draught Baptist Witbier was how clear it is. Still, it has the proper soft wheaty texture, and although it's sweeter than most, that's not a problem here the way it was with the lager. There's lots of orange cordial in both aroma and flavour, plus a lovely assertive peppery spice to balance it out. Like all good witbier, drinkability is paramount, and even on a drizzly November evening I could see this working as a perfect thirst-quencher in warmer weather. I've never seen any of the Baptist beers out in the wild, however, so I don't have a way to, eventually, test that.

About a kilometre down the road from the main brewery, van Steenberge has established a satellite microbrewery and restaurant in what look to be converted farm buildings. The restoration has been very tastefully done and it's all very classy, except for the try-too-hard craft-beer name they've given it: Hopspot. We were bussed down here for late evening drinks and snacks.

Pouring on arrival was Piraat Red, the cherry-flavoured version of their strong blonde ale. As one might expect, this was immensely sweet and syrupy, in the way that large Belgian breweries do crowd-pleasers. It did at least taste of cherry, though very much in a syrupy way. It was served on ice, which I guess is one way to hide the 10.5% ABV, and it worked too. You wouldn't think it was a strong beer, nor indeed a beer at all.

The sub-brands continued with Augustijn Donker, the dark one in their range of abbey beers. This was pretty good, if a little simplistic. Although it's sweet, there's a crispness too: a roasted grain element which provides a pleasing counterpoint to the more typical raisin and fig esters. On the downside, it's clean to the point of dull, a seemingly quite neutral yeast failing to bring the clove and nutmeg spices that make more famous Belgian beers in this style the masterpieces of complexity that they are. As a dumbed-down version, this will absolutely do. Any non-Belgian brewer would be very proud of it.

Gulden Draak Brewmaster was served up next: a straightforward barrel-aged version, using non-specific whisky casks. Still at 10.5% ABV it is unsurprisingly thick and chewy, with a light fizz and strong heat. There's an added whiff of vanilla from the oak, and also a strange and strong white wine effect, which I guess is also oak-derived. A kiss of sweet strawberry finishes it off. This isn't wildly different from basic Gulden Draak, and I can see why they subsequently went more interesting on the barrel front, with the likes of Laphroaig. It does offer a worthwhile twist on the original.

Dessert was another Baptist beer, and one which appears to be mostly exclusive to Hopspot: Offside. Details were not forthcoming, though it appears to be 5.2% ABV and brewed with cherries, or more likely cherry-flavoured syrup. It tastes of cherry candy and summer fruit jam: all very processed and artificial. A little bit of sherbet piquancy classes it up to a tiny degree, but otherwise this is another for the candy beer brigade. I don't know why they thought a serious group like ours would appreciate it. I didn't get a chance to ask anyone before we were herded back on to the bus and off into the murky Flemish darkness.

I have one more van Steenberge to report on, from way back at the opening reception. Fourchette is yet another brand departure, this time evoking fine French cuisine, with a website that looks like a seasonal perfume ad and claiming the involvement of "top chefs". Unconvincing marketing bullshit aside, it's a 7.5% ABV blend of wheat beer and tripel, and retains positive aspects of both: a soft and grainy wholesomeness forms the base, embellished with the warmth, fruit and clove spice of a tripel. I guess it's meant to be served with food, but worked perfectly well by itself. The brewers and blenders did actually come up with something very decent in answer to the risible concept behind it.

Events in Ghent wrapped up on a Thursday afternoon, and when I was planning the trip I thought: yes, I could come straight home, but it seemed like a bit of a waste of a weekend. From the list of just nice places to go which aren't far away, I had picked Haarlem, and headed there next.

Ghentish town

It was atmospherically foggy when I arrived into Ghent, for the judging of this year's Brussels Beer Challenge. Before getting stuck in to the contenders, there was the informalities of the opening evening's social programme, including a historic walking tour of the city.

That swung by the Marriott, an architectural accomplishment and landmark all by itself, where we indulged in a round of a city flagship beer, Gentse Gruut from the Stadsbrouwerij Gruut. This beer, around since 2009, is supposed to recreate the unhopped herbal beers of the middle ages. I like these odd meadowy novelties, but this one desn't lean in to the gimmick. Instead of herbs, this tastes like a pretty standard weissbier, all banana esters. A hint of sourness at the edge is the only nod to weirdness. It's OK, but not the kooky fun I was expecting.

"Inferno Gruut" sounds too interesting to pass up, so I gave that a go in the Ghent branch of pub chain Bier Central. It's broadly in the tripel style, being blonde in colour and 9% ABV. I braced myself for the inferno, but alas it proved quite lukewarm. The aroma is a pleasant but unobtrusive white pepper effect, and there's both that and green peppercorn in the flavour, but that's as spicy as it gets. The rest is quite standard tripel: honey and cereal, with an strong alcoholic warmth. Yes it's a little more spicy than typical tripel, but honestly I'm not sure I would recognise it as having been enhanced, since you can get a similar effect from some Belgian yeast strains. For a brewery with a fascinating unique selling point, the Stadsbrouwerij seems to be playing things very safe indeed.

There was time for one more at Bier Central and I choose an IPA from the Belgoo brand, Bloemekei. This arrived a brilliant clear golden colour, smelling of ripe and fresh grapefruit peel: bitter, but with a spicy edge. The flavour does an about face from this, however, delivering a dollop of meringue pie sweetness and not much else. The whole thing is closer to a blonde ale than the 6.5% ABV IPA it purports to be. It's decently made, but very plain fare, and doesn't give much by way of either Belgianness or IPAness. This was my last beer of day one and I had hoped for something with a bit more wallop.

We had a visit to local brewery-restaurant Dok on the cards for later, and they had beer pouring at the opening reception, including their pilsner Dok 13. I'm not especially enamoured of the style labelled "Belgian pils", but this Belgian pils didn't taste like a "Belgian pils" to me. Instead, it's far more north-German, with a heady, funky aroma of fermenting grass. The taste is softer, with a balanced crispness meeting a bite of fresh lemon. There's a fair amount of haze, and it benefits from the slight textural softness that this brings. All round, it's rather decent: accessible and sessionable, but with plenty of points of interest.

The same can be said of their flagship pale ale, Waar is Loca. 6.5% makes it a heavy contender, and you certainly get full value from that: not only the malt richness and alcoholic warmth, but a thick and resinous hop napalm as well. For all that, it looks quite innocent: an easy-going clear gold. But beware, this has hidden, and delicious, depths.

Dok itself occupies a hangar-like former warehouse space called Hal 16 (Up the Dubs!), converted to a restaurant and bar, with the brewing kit behind and above the counter. Contract brewing takes care of the flagships, but the onsite brewery produces a staggering array of beers, almost all of them one-time-only recipes. You can expect a couple of dozen options, plus guest beers, should you visit.

They had just launched a beer they made for a local dumpling restaurant: a lager made with rice and kombu seaweed, called Tina. "Crisp" doesn't begin to describe this one; it's incredibly dry and tastes more like a rye cracker than a beer. It does begin to get a little bit fruity as it warms, but by then it had already lost me. I found it quite harsh, almost ashen, and I'm sure something of this nature isn't meant to be difficult drinking. Still, the brewer seemed quite pleased with it, so what do I know?

Silly long names have gone somewhat out of fashion in beer, I'm happy to say, but Dok are keeping the tradition alive. If Ryan Got Hit By A Bus, There Would Be Another Ryan is a collaboration with Canadian wild beer specialist Trial & Ale. We were given an explanation of the name but I have too much respect for your time to recount it. This is in a rare old Belgian beer style called uytzet, which they describe as a kind of wild-fermented dubbel. It is only 5.5% ABV, however, and a cloudy dark amber colour. The first thing I noticed was the powerful Brettanomyces aroma: dry and funky, very much like the signature smell of Orval. And of course that's the centrepiece of the flavour, along with a beeswax bitterness. It's very highly attenuated, making it quite sharp and a little acrid. For me, it was one of those historical recreation beers that are academically interesting but not really much fun to drink. I would have got more enjoyment from an Orval.

Cherry Wally is a weak pun on the name of legendary Belgian singer Eddy Wally. It's a grape ale, blended with a barrel-aged saison, with cherries added in. That sounds quite convoluted but it absolutely pays dividends. Though it's an unattractive murky red, the aroma is almost lambic-like: funk mixed with gunpowder. The carbonation is low, which gives it a velvety texture and allows a beautifully rich real cherry flavour to coat the palate. It was designed for summer drinking, and is light-bodied, even though the ABV is a substantial 6.7%. The grape adds a balancing tannic dryness to the finish, and the whole thing is rounded and mature-tasting. You get all of the promised fruit with this, tasting very real, but also as though it belongs in the beer, not tacked on to it. It's beautifully done, and not the sort of high-end output I would expect from a brewpub.

The last beer they wanted to show off to us was Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, a white IPA brewed with (as the name makes clear) Comet hops. The collaborating brewery, Daoravida, is Brazilian, and both Brazilian and Belgian Comet hops went into the kettle. And the hops are the main feature here: I didn't detect any contribution from the herbs and spices that so often muck up the IPA element of white IPA. Here, it's a straightforward and attractive zest and resin aroma, leading to a sharp and invigorating lime and sweet onion flavour, before finishing long and dank and oily. Job done: it's a beaut. The name and recipe have nerdy self-indulgence written all over them, but I cannot argue with the top-notch quality of the result.

Show-and-tell ended and we were left to our own devices. With a list as long as this brewpub's, it was inevitable that there were a few more I wanted to try before leaving. Is that a black IPA? Even my seen-it-all Belgian fellow judge was amused by its name: Black & Lekker. Surely someone has done that one before. Regardless, this Black & Lekker proved to be exactly as described, starting beautifully floral and doused in rosewater, before a tingly jolt of spiced red cabbage and then a long, luxurious, chocolate finish. 7% ABV means it's nicely full-bodied, but not hot nor heavy nor any way unbalanced. There's a lightness of touch to the whole thing; a polish, which makes it incredibly enjoyable and moreish. I don't know how long it'll be around for, but black IPA enthusiasts should seek it out.

My deoch an dorais at Dok was in another relatively rare craft style: Scotch ale. I absolutely did not ask anyone why it was called Louwee Kan Het Niet Aan ("Louwee Can't Handle It"), but I'm sure it's hilarious to at least three people. This is a bumptious 8% ABV and smells heavily of toffee, but is surprisingly not hot, coming across as smooth and sweet. There's a hint of smoke and burnt caramel to add character to what's otherwise a warm and chewy malt-driven dark amber ale. I didn't do any judging of Scotch ale (I don't think there were any in the competition), but I would deem this to be fully true to style and a particularly good example.

Where next? I discovered that there was one Craftonian beer bar in Ghent, something which I think is still very rare in provincial Belgium. The owner/manager/barman of Bar Beenhouwer says he sources much of his stock in the Netherlands. We had plenty of time to chat, what with me being the only customer in the little L-shaped bar at 9pm on a Wednesday night, while the traditional cafés along the street were teeming.

I opened my tab with Saison Pot de Fleur, from SPO, a brewery in eastern France. This is a golden wild ale that's been aged in Islay whisky casks. It's a strange idea, but it works, and draws in characteristics from each of the elements. It's clear and cleanly sour, with a sharp bite of primarily citric acidity. I didn't think that would match well with warm peaty whisky, but it does, almost like there's a tumbler of decent malt served alongside. The saison side of the equation gets a little bit lost, but there is an earthy, farmy, straw dryness in here which is in keeping with that. This is daring, very interesting, and most importantly enjoyable to drink: exactly what I come to bars like this for.

The draught menu's one nod to local was Sunrise, from Ghent's own Stroom brewery. It was early November, so still just about socially acceptable to be serving a pumpkin beer. This 6%-er covers all the basics but little else. It's quite heavy and sweet, with lots of crisp brown sugar and an oily, syrupy, pecan-pie sweet side. Autumnal and American is the spec, and that's exactly what you get with no further embellishments. I can't see this convincing any sceptics of the benefits of pumpkin, and pumpkin-spiced, beer, but I liked it as a desserty confection, albeit not the more extreme sort. I doubt there are many Belgian breweries on the pumpkin bandwagon.

Once again, I wanted something big to go out on, and figured the 10% ABV hazy American triple IPA would be a good bet. That was Dank Hunt from Ohio brewery DankHouse. The name makes a big promise as regards the sort of hop flavours to expect, but they didn't really materialise. Instead it's vanilla all the way through, with only some minor sweet topnotes of baked peach and pear. Surprisingly, there's no real heat from all of this, and it's easy drinking in a way that triple IPA probably shouldn't be. I got on OK with it, liking the cleanness in particular, but the lack of hop fireworks is a bit of a serious flaw.

Today's post finishes on a sad story. When I was first discovering Belgium, Waterhuis aan de Bierkant in Ghent was deemed one of the nation's great pubs. I've visited a couple of times over the years and had always found it a charming little place; a touch ramshackle, but well-kept and with a great beer list. At some point in recent years, local megabrewer Huyghe, the Delirium Tremens people, took ownership and have done a most unsympathetic renovation while skewing the beer list heavily towards their own products. For me, it has sucked all the charm out of the place.

I can't complain too hard, however, as I was there to claim the free beer which brewery was offering all the judges. Huyghe has revived (commandeered, perhaps) one of Ghent's historic local beer brands: Artevelde. I chose Artevelde Leute: the people's beer? It's a 6.2% ABV blonde ale and very sweet with it, piling in layers of vanilla-flavoured custard and bubblegum. What nuance is present is a kind of nutty almond or marzipan, one which only adds to the cakey, dessertish feel. The brewery claims it has pilsner character, making me immediately unlikely to drink any of their pilsner. I was as disappointed by the beer as I was with the pub.

Of course, Huyghe featured big in my few days in Ghent. More on that, as well as their arch-rival Ghentish family brewer, in the next post.